Today marks the World Media Freedom Day established on May 3, 1993 by the United Nations Assembly. This day is celebrated in the media around the world at 11:55 a.m. when the program is interrupted for five minutes and through the action “Five minutes of thunderous silence” attention is drawn to the position of journalists.
A group of African journalists, 14 of them, referring to the 19th Universal Declaration of the UN, the right to freedom of speech, managed to fight for this day to raise awareness of the importance of media freedom and remind the governments of countries to respect and support the right to freedom of expression.
Every year on May 3, UNESCO marks this day in the manner established by the General Assembly of the United Nations, by gathering journalists and media organizations to submit a report on the assessment of the state of media freedom around the world. It is also an opportunity to recall the essential principles of media freedom, to assess the level of freedom, to transmit information, to protect the media from those who want to threaten their safety, and to pay tribute to journalists who lost their lives doing their job.
An award was also established in honor of Guillermo Cano Isaz, who was killed in front of the office of his newspaper El Expedator in Bogata on December 17, 1986, after writing articles about Colombian drug cartels.
Radio Free Europe journalist Alsa Kurmaseva was nominated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and 22 other countries for the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Prize for Freedom of the Media in 2024.
